[Python-ideas] Draft PEP: Standard daemon process library

[Ben Finney]

Jesse Noller <jnoller at gmail.com> writes:

> Perhaps; but it makes sense to nest it under the abstraction -
> daemons.unixdaemon/winservice/osxdaemon

I really don't think it's helpful to conflate this “service” model
with the much simpler concept of a Unix daemon.

To implement a service on Unix, it's most logical to use a daemon; but
the reverse is definitely not true (which is a large part of my
resistance to expanding the current PEP to conflate the two concepts).

Instead, I think that people who want a “service” would be better
served by a top-level module named ‘service’, to preserve that concept
as separate from the concept of a daemon.

In other words, my understanding is: ‘import service’ should get an
API (so far in no PEP that I know of) for a distinct purpose, that of
implementing an MS Windows-style service, which uses whatever
OS-specific implementation makes sense.

‘import daemon’ gets a totally different API for a different purpose,
that of turning the current running program into a daemon, which
AFAICT only makes a whole lot of sense on Unix and is what I'm
proposing in this PEP.

It makes much more sense for ‘daemon’ to stay simple and continue to
mean the Unix-specific concept of “daemon”, without necessarily
obstructing whoever wants to implement ‘service’, than for ‘daemon’ in
Python to mean something other than the Unix meaning.

-- 
 \     “No matter how far down the wrong road you've gone, turn back.” |
  `\                                                  —Turkish proverb |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney